The latest offering from the brilliantly unhinged imagination of Jasper Fforde, Early Riser’s bizarre premise of a hibernating humanity and their killer dreams comes on like an unholy marriage of Monty Python and Game of Thrones. Dizzyingly inventive and wildly funny, this is a delicious opener to an exciting new series.
The new standalone novel from Number 1 bestselling author Jasper Fforde.
Every Winter, the human population hibernates.
During those bitterly cold four months, the nation is a snow-draped landscape of desolate loneliness, and devoid of human activity.
Well, not quite.
Your name is Charlie Worthing and it's your first season with the Winter Consuls, the committed but mildly unhinged group of misfits who are responsible for ensuring the hibernatory safe passage of the sleeping masses.
You are investigating an outbreak of viral dreams which you dismiss as nonsense; nothing more than a quirky artefact borne of the sleeping mind.
When the dreams start to kill people, it's unsettling.
When you get the dreams too, it's weird.
When they start to come true, you begin to doubt your sanity.
But teasing truth from Winter is never easy: You have to avoid the Villains and their penchant for murder, kidnapping and stamp collecting, ensure you aren't eaten by Nightwalkers whose thirst for human flesh can only be satisfied by comfort food, and sidestep the increasingly less-than-mythical WinterVolk.
But so long as you remember to wrap up warmly, you'll be fine.
Publisher: Hodder & Stoughton
ISBN: 9781444763607
Number of pages: 416
Weight: 291 g
Dimensions: 196 x 130 x 28 mm
Praise for Early Riser - :
Fforde pours his brilliant imagination into every corner of this world - Daily Mail
Endlessly imaginative and distinctively quirky, this is entertaining fun - Mail on Sunday
Brilliantly funny . . . His relentless imagination and his affection for his characters are contagious and irresistible - New York Times
The master of the alternative universe - Press Association
It's been worth the wait - Oxford Mail
Make(s) us look at our world anew - SFX Magazine
the thriller aspect is propulsive - Times
Jasper Fforde lunacy at its best - Daily Express
Fans of Jasper Fforde's unique blend of comicdystopia and quirky British cosiness will not bedisappointed with his first novel in six years - Guardian
a zany send-up of all things British - Guardian
Praise for Jasper Fforde - :
Reading a Fforde novel feels like taking off on a magic carpet, only to be picked up by another and another and taken on new flights of fantasy . . . When the plot is thundering along, peppered with jokes, lively dialogue and silly names . . . you just sit back and enjoy the ride. - Scotsman
Fans of the late Douglas Adams, or, even, Monty Python, will feel at home with Fforde - Herald
Forget all the rules of time, space and reality; just sit back and enjoy the adventure. - Telegraph
'Fforde's books are more than just an ingenious idea. They are written with buoyant zest and are tautly plotted. They have empathetic heroes and heroines who nearly make terrible mistakes and suitably dastardly villains who do. They also have more twists and turns than Christie, and are embellished with the rich details of Dickens or Pratchett - Independent
No summaries can do justice to the sheer inventiveness, wit, complexity, erudition, unexpectedness and originality of the works, nor to their vast repertoire of intricate wordplay and puns - The Times
I love to dive into Jasper Fforde's books. They're wildly imaginative but he makes you believe every word. Where else can you encounter a ditzy dodo, a deadly chimera and a straight-as-an-arrow detective investigating what really happened to Humpty Dumpty? Great stuff. - David Baldacci
Fforde keeps the puns and neologisms coming thick and fast while exploring every facet of his novel's intriguing premise - Financial Times
For those who have never read Fford, this is a characteristically funny, clever Alternate Reality novel in which hibernation is the norm for humanity, Global Cooling is an ongoing issue, Big Pharma is producing a drug... More
Absolutely amazing, so many clever and entertaining puns wrapped up in an adventure like no other. The line between reality and imagination is intelligently blurred with Mr Fforde's unique style.
One of my...
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I'm a big fan of Jasper Fforde's particular brand of imagination. I like puns (the worse the better), footnotes and over-the-top weirdness and his books certainly fit the bill for me. Like most people I... More
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